Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a removable, efficiently shock absorbing, protective and heat sensitive, color changing silicone sleeve for baby feeding glass bottles or containers.
Description of Prior Art
Consumer market for baby products is vast and ever expanding. Specifically talking about safety products for baby bottles or containers, there are umpteen options available to the consumers. Various competitive products in the market comprise silicone sleeves based baby feeding glass bottles. These bottles consist of breakage free, heat insulating, comfortable gripping surface based silicone sleeves for protecting baby feeding glass bottles from undue damage, preventing babies from burns and facilitating easy transportation. Such silicone sleeves definitely serve the purpose of an insulating protective cover for baby feeding glass bottles or containers but fail to test the approximate temperature of the baby glass bottle contents just by viewing only, without involving the actual need of physically sensing or wrist testing the bottle contents in order to gauge the temperature of the liquid food inside. The present invention also goes a step further by providing an efficient shock absorbing system in the form of bumpers with air pockets at the four corners of the color changing silicone sleeve. These air pockets further comprise of silicon tubes and silicone supporting beams which prevent the air pockets to collapse upon application of pressure. Although there are prior arts discussing about various shock absorbing systems or elements in the silicone sleeves for containers but none of them utilizes the concept of air pockets with supporting beams or silicone tubing as discussed above. Examples like US Pat. Application No. 20090057257 to Marcus et al. (2009); U.S. Pat. No. 6,865,815 to Dunn et al. (2005); have already been discussed in the parent application.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 2,706,571 to Ryan (1955) discusses about a shield for nursing bottle adapted to protect the bottle against breakage. The shield has two-stage cushioning action including an initial stage of soft cushioning through springing of the walls of the shield, and a stage of cushioning involving compression of bumper beads at the extremities of the shield. Furthermore, in order to conveniently adhere the sleeve to the bottle, there are annular beads projecting inwardly from the surface of the sleeve. These annular beads are spaced axially from the bumper beads permitting them to stretch or contract in order to conform to slightly varying bottle diameters. On the contrary, applicant's invention does not utilize bumper or annular beads as shock absorbing elements. Instead, the applicant's invention incorporates special bumpers with air pockets as shock absorbing elements at the four corners of the color changing silicone sleeve. These air pockets are further supported either by a mesh of supporting beams made of silicone, created from the same mould as the silicone sleeve; or by a circular tubing made of silicone. Adding supporting elements i.e. silicone beams and silicone circular tubing inside the air pockets prevent collapsing of these air pockets in the event of fall or slipping of the baby bottle. Thus, making the silicone sleeve efficiently impact resistant. Moreover, Ryan's Bottle Muff uses annular beads projecting inwardly from the surface of the sleeve. However these annular beads can create a gap between the bottle and the sleeve's wall. This could further lead to issues when the baby attempts to grip the bottle with the sleeve put on. The Baby has to press hard to push the sleeve's wall close to the bottle in order to achieve a tight grip. A Baby's grip is not that strong and hence this may cause problems. On the contrary, the applicant's color changing sleeve's design incorporates large windows or cut outs on both the sides of the sleeves, leaving two reasonably thin side walls. The side walls of the sleeve stay in contact with the bottle to ensure easy grip. Since, there are two large windows or cut outs in the applicant's sleeve's design, it renders an adequate level of friction that is required to grip the bottle.
Another US Pat. Application No. 2010/0224585 A1 to Feeley et al. (2010) discusses about impact resistant casing for breakable containers. This application primarily talks about the shock absorbers comprising of elastomeric protuberance that extends outward from the surface of the structural material. These elastomeric protuberances can be in the form of rings, concentric rings and conical shapes. The shock absorbers can be placed at any conceivable location around the breakable container to reduce the frequency of breakage upon an impact. On the contrary, applicant's sleeve's shock absorbing system is completely different from the one proposed by Feeley et al. Applicant does not employ elastomeric protuberances of any kind Applicant's shock absorbing system or it's elements are hidden from the outer surface of the silicone sleeve and is only identifiable as pronounced bumps i.e. airbags at the corners. Feeley et al. also talks about a coating on the inner surface of silicone casing to facilitate the application and removal of the silicone casing from the container. It is also indicated that such an inner coating may be made up of phthalate esters, which are potentially hazardous for babies. On the other hand, applicant's color changing silicone sleeve does not have any inner coating or coating on the inner surface of the sleeve. The main reason for providing an inner coating is the fact that Feeley's silicone casing design possess a high level of contact between the container and the side walls of silicone casing, thus it becomes necessary to incorporate a coating to facilitate easy insertion and removal of the casing. However, applicant's sleeve's design exhibits two large cut outs or openings thereby eliminating the need of any inner surface coating to facilitate insertion or release of the sleeve from the container. Hence, the present invention is a substantial improvement over the existing prior arts.